The Mari language (марий йылме, ; марийский язык), formerly known as the Cheremiss language, spoken by approximately 400,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation, as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari, are found also in the Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions. Mari is the titular and official language of its republic, alongside Russian. The Mari language today has three standard forms: Hill Mari, Northwestern Mari, and Meadow Mari. The latter is predominant and spans the continuum Meadow Mari to Eastern Mari from the Republic into the Ural dialects of Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk Oblast and Udmurtia), whereas the former, Hill Mari, shares a stronger affiliation with the Northwestern dialect (spoken in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and parts of the Kirov Oblast). Both language forms use modified versions of Cyrillic script. For the non-native, Hill Mari, or Western Mari, can be recognized by its use of the special letters "ӓ" and "ӹ" in addition to the shared letters "ӱ" and "ӧ", while Eastern and Meadow Mari utilize a special letter "ҥ". The use of two "variants", as opposed to two "languages", has been debated: Maris recognize the unity of the ethnic group, and the two forms are very close, but distinct enough to cause some problems with communication.

Ethnonym and glottonym

The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (, cheremisy, cheremisskiy yazyk). In medieval texts the variant forms Sarmys and Tsarmys are also found, as well as ; and, Śarmăs before the Russian Revolution. The term Mari comes from the Maris' autonym марий (mari).

Sociolinguistic situation

Most Maris live in rural areas with slightly more than a quarter living in cities. In the republic's capital, Yoshkar-Ola, the percentage of Maris is just over 23 percent. At the end of the 1980s (per the 1989 census) Maris numbered 670,868, of whom 80% (542,160) claimed Mari as their first language and 18.8% did not speak Mari. In the Mari Republic, 11.6% claimed Mari was not their first language. In a survey by the Mari Research Institute more than three quarters of Maris surveyed considered Mari language to be the most crucial marker of ethnic identity, followed by traditional culture (61%) and common historical past (22%), religion (16%), character and mentality (15%) and appearance (11%) (see Glukhov and Glukhov for details). A gradual downward trend towards assimilation to Russian has been noted for the Communist period: the 1926 census indicated more than 99% of Maris considered Mari their first language, declining to less than 81% in 1989. Some qualitative evidence of a reversal in recent years has been noted. There was no state support for Mari language in Imperial Russia, and with the exception of some enthusiasts and numerous ecclesiastical texts by the Russian Orthodox Church, there was almost no education in Mari language. After the October Revolution, there was a period of support of all lesser national cultures in the Soviet Union, but eventually Russification returned. While the development of Mari literary language continued, still, only elementary-school education was available in Mari in the Soviet period, with this policy ending in village schools in the 1970–1980s. The period of glasnost and perestroika in the 1990s opened opportunities for a revival of efforts expand the use of Mari in education and the public sphere. In the 1990s, the Mari language, alongside Russian, was proclaimed in the republican constitution to be an official language of Mari El. By the beginning of the 21st century, Mari language and literature was taught in 226 schools. At the History and Philology Department of the Mari State University and the Krupskaya Teachers' Training Institute (Yoshkar-Ola), more than half of the subjects are taught in Mari. However, by 2024, only 9% of ethnic Mari children where being taught Mari in just 81 schools.

Dialects

The principal division between Mari varieties is the West and the East. According to the Soviet linguist Kovedyaeva (1976:9-15, 1993:163-164) the Mari macrolanguage is divided into four main dialects: Each main dialect is divided into their own smaller local subdialects. Only Hill and Meadow Mari have their own literary written standard varieties, based on the dialects of Kozmodemyansk and Yoshkar-Ola respectively. Eastern and Meadow Mari are often united as a Meadow-Eastern supra-dialect. Northwestern Mari is transitional between the Hill and Meadow dialects, and its phonology and morphology are closer to Hill Mari.

[The four main dialects of Mari:

{{legend|chocolate|Hill Mari}} {{legend|#d7d700|Northwestern Mari}} {{legend|violet|Meadow Mari}} {{legend|royalblue|Eastern Mari|undefined | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Mari///language///dialect///map.svg]

Orthography

Mari is mostly written with the Cyrillic script.

Phonology

Vowels

The schwa and its fronted counterpart are usually transcribed in Finno-Ugric transcription as ə̑ (reduced mid unrounded vowel) and ə (reduced front unrounded vowel) respectively. The former has sometimes been transcribed in IPA as, but phonetically the vowel is most strongly distinguished by its short duration and reduced quality. Descriptions vary on the degree of backness and labialization. The mid vowels, , have more reduced allophones , , at the end of a word.

Word prosody

Stress is not phonemic in Mari, but a dynamic stress system is exhibited phonetically, the stressed syllable being higher in pitch and amplitude and greater in length than an unstressed syllable. Generally, there is one prominent syllable per word and prominence may be found in any syllable of the word. Post- and prefixes behave as clitics, i.e., they do not have their own stress. For example, пӧ́рт (pört, "house") гыч (gəč, "out of") ; or му́ро (muro, "song") дене (dene, "with").

Consonants

Consonants are shown in Cyrillic, Latin, and the IPA:

Phonological processes

Like several other Uralic languages, Mari has vowel harmony. In addition to front/back harmony, Mari also features round/unround harmony. If the stressed vowel in the word is rounded, then the suffix will contain a rounded vowel: for example, кӱтӱ́ ([kyˈty] 'herd') becomes кӱтӱ́штӧ ([kyˈtyʃtø], 'in the herd'); if the stressed vowel is unrounded, then the suffix will contain an unrounded vowel: ки́д ([kid], 'hand') becomes ки́дыште ([ˈkidəʃte], 'in the hand'). If the stressed vowel is back, then the suffix will end in a back vowel: агу́р ([aˈgur], 'whirlpool') becomes агу́рышто ([aˈgurəʃto], 'in the whirlpool').

Declension

Like other Uralic languages, Mari is an agglutinating language. It lacks grammatical gender, and does not use articles.

Case

Meadow Mari has 9 productive cases, of which 3 are locative cases. The usage of the latter ones is restricted to inanimate objects. Many cases, aside from their basic function, are used in other situations, such as in expressions of time. If a locative statement was to be made about an animate object, postpositions would be used. Additionally, terms denoting family members have vocative forms. These are, however, not created with a specific paradigm, and only exist in a few pre-defined cases. Hill Mari has these cases, plus the abessive case (of the form -де), which is used to form adverbials stating without the involvement or influence of which an action happens.

Number

Mari, though an agglutinative language, does not have a separate morpheme to signify plurality. There are three particles, which are attached to the end of words with a hyphen, used to signify plural.

Possessive suffixes

Every grammatical person in Mari has its own possessive suffix.

Additional suffixes

Additional particles, falling into none of the categories above, can be added to the very end of a word, giving it some additional meaning. For example, the suffix -ат (-at), means 'also' or 'too'.

Arrangement of suffixes

The arrangement of suffixes varies from case to case. Although the case suffixes are after the possessive suffixes in the genitive and the accusative, the opposite is the case for the locative cases. In the dative, both arrangements are possible. There are many other arrangements in the plural—the position of the plural particle is flexible. The arrangement here is one commonly used possibility.

Comparison

Comparison happens with adjectives and adverbs. The comparative is formed with the suffix -рак (-rak). The superlative is formed by adding the word эн (en) in front.

Conjugation

Morphologically, conjugation follows three tenses and three moods in Meadow Mari.

Conjugation types

In Meadow Mari, verbs can conjugate according to two conjugation types. These differ from each other in all forms but the infinitive and the third-person plural of the imperative. Unfortunately, the infinitive is the form denoted in dictionaries and word lists. It is, thus, necessary to either mark verb infinitives by their conjugation type in word lists, or to include a form in which the conjugation class is visible—usually, the first-person singular present, which ends in -ам (or -ям) for verbs in the first category, and in -ем (or -эм) for second-type verbs.

Tense

The three tenses of Mari verbs are: Additional tenses can be formed through periphrasis.

Mood

The moods are:

Negation

Negation in Mari uses a 'negative verb', much like Finnish does. The negative verb is more versatile than the negative verb in Finnish (see Finnish grammar), existing in more grammatical tenses and moods. It has its own form in the present indicative, imperative and desiderative, and in the first preterite indicative. Other negations are periphrastic. The negation verb in its corresponding form is put in front of the negated verb in its second-person singular (the stem-only form), much as it is in Finnish and Estonian. The verb улаш (ulaš) – to be – has its own negated forms.

Example

In order to illustrate the conjugation in the respective moods and times, one verb of the first declination (лекташ – to go) and one verb of the second declination (мондаш – to forget) will be used.

Infinitive forms

Verbs have two infinitive forms: the standard infinitive and the necessive infinitive, used when a person must do something. The person needing to do something is put in the dative in such a situation.

Participles

There are four participles in Meadow Mari:

Gerunds

There are five gerunds in Meadow Mari:

Syntax

Word order

Word order in Mari is subject–object–verb. This means that the object appears directly before the predicate. Word order in Mari is affected by information structure. However, the position of the verb is not affected. The focus position is directly before the verb. Subjects, objects, adverbial, and secondary predicate can appear in this position. The examples below quoted in Saarinen (2022) show the different elements that can appear in the focus position.

<section begin="list-of-glossing-abbreviations"/> 1PST:first preterite 2PST:second preterite <section end="list-of-glossing-abbreviations"/> Question particles мо /mo/ and ма /mɑ/ are clause-final. However, Georgieva et al. (2021) point out that Mari also allows backgrounded material to occur after the verb. Moving the verb to other positions in the sentence is possible for stylistic reasons or for emphasis.

Nominal predication

Two nouns can be put against each other to form nominal predication. According to Saarinen (2022) both nouns and adjectives appear in the nominative case and do not agree with the subject in number in nominal predication. Saarinen (2022) notes that when the sentence is in the indicative mood with 3sg, a copula is not used. However, a copula is obligatory and appears clause-final and in other persons, tenses, and moods.

Verbal predication

Saarinen (2022) points out that the object is marked with the accusative in transitive clauses. However, the object can appear in the nominative case in non-finite constructions. When the clause is ditransitive, the direct object appears in the accusative case and the indirect takes the dative case. However, Saarinen (2022) notes that in dialects and with verbs such as йӱкты- /jyktə-/ 'water' and пукшы- /pukʃə-/ 'feed' both objects appear in the accusative case.

Some common words and phrases

Observation: Note that the accent mark, which denotes the place of stress, is not used in actual Mari orthography.